Local communities need to plan their schools

Events in Kirklees, Yorkshire, show that school planning needs to be coordinated within communities. And the ideal body is a local education authority, says
Tom Clark

Kenneth Baker, education secretary in the Thatcher government, is now in favour of middle schools, although it was his emphasis on testing at 11 that partly caused their demise. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian Martin Argles/Guardian

On my first day of secondary school I recall peering up at the giants in the fifth year, and reflecting that they somehow seemed bigger than grown-ups. Ever since, 11-16 – let alone 18 – has struck me as an extraordinary age range for a single institution.

Although that range is the norm in England, other countries do things differently, and so do the public schools, with their 8-13 prep-school feeders. Pockets of state education are organised like that, too, served by England's 200 middle schools. The 1944 Education Act imposed a rigid primary/secondary divide at 11, but during the 1960s the rules were relaxed, and the middle school tally shot up from nowhere to about 1,400 by 1982, since when the numbers have fallen away almost as fast.

The middle-school boom came about as politicians spotted a means of removing the sting from "comprehensivisation". Kenneth Baker, education secretary in the Thatcher government, is one of those who now bemoans the subsequent middle-school bust, but his own emphasis on testing and tables at 11 prefigured it. Throughout this twisting tale, however, it was always forces affecting the whole educational ecology that made the difference. In the brave new world of academies, by contrast, the all-important factor can be the whim of one headteacher – as recent events in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, demonstrate.

Most of this borough is organised around 11-16 secondaries. One exception is the "Shelley pyramid", in which 18 small primaries feed into a couple of middle schools, which in turn provide pupils for Shelley College. Sitting at the pyramid's apex, it recruits from year 9. This is all in one of the more prosperous corners of Kirklees, where Ofsted reports were favourable, and everybody seemed happy enough – until Shelley became an academy in autumn 2011.

Within months its head, John McNally, began working up plans to expand his empire by recruiting children in years 7 and 8, plans rubber-stamped by just five of the 13 governors at a poorly attended meeting in June [see footnote]. Not until September did Kirkburton and Scissett middle schools learn of a scheme that had existential implications for them. As an independent academy, Shelley had no obligation to consider them – and it didn't. Some mix of relocation, redesignation and site-splitting were the hazily imagined consequences, but there was no need for Shelley to think things through because this was Somebody Else's Problem.

Shelley's proposal raised the temperature by using contested data to suggest the current middle schools weren't cutting the mustard. The feeder primaries started to fret that in this dog-eat-dog educational world, the middle schools would seek to survive the loss of pupils from years 8 and 9 by turning themselves into academies, and then expanding down the age range. With all local schools bar one in panic, teachers, parents and even pupils set up a campaign, put together an authoritative response document, and branded McNally the Pharaoh of the Pyramid. Faced with this groundswell of middle-class fury, the local Tory MP for marginal Dewsbury, Simon Reevell, needed an escape route. Green councillor Andrew Cooper devised an ingenious one by proposing to crystallise opposition in a local referendum. With the result predictable, there was no need to actually hold the vote – McNally simply conceded to the community's evident view.

A bruised McNally now rightly reflects that reasonable people will have different views on the appropriate age range for a school. But, he says, "the debate should be less personal, which could be achieved if there were some form of co-ordinating mechanism, so that all the schools in the area knew that their interests were taken into account". To my own mind, at least, the obvious candidate to be that "co-ordinating mechanism" is a local education authority.

• This article was amended on 22 January 2013. The story states that plans to recruit children in years 7 and 8 were "rubber-stamped by just five of the 13 governors at a poorly attended meeting in June". To clarify: at the June meeting, where 5 governors voted, the initial decision was made to explore the proposal; it was at a subsequent meeting, which was better attended, where the decision to launch a formal consultation was made by the governors.